A NURSE accused of stealing sedatives told a court it crossed her mind that she had been ‘set up’.

Leona Bellhouse denies pinching midazolam when she worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital’s gynaecology department.

She told Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday that she was not responsible for ‘fraudulent’ entries in a logbook for the drug.

The 59-year-old of Kingston Road, Frilford, Abingdon, said that signatures of her initials beside one such entry in a logbook for midazolam and in a book used to sign out keys to access locked medical cupboards were not made by her.

She told jurors: “I usually just write ‘B’.

“There would be no reason for me to do that. If I was going to steal it why would I put my own initials in anyway?”

Damian van Duyvenbode, prosecuting, asked her if it had crossed her mind that somebody had set her up.

Bellhouse replied: “Of course it has crossed my mind.”

Earlier jurors were told hospital porter Stephen Jacob had discovered the defendant’s alleged offending while he was cleaning the theatres and anaesthetic room after medics had left for the day.

He said he spotted Bellhouse, who told him she had been asked to check the drugs cupboard was locked, and that he heard rustling before finding drugs packaging in a bin.

But on Tuesday Bellhouse told jurors that although Mr Jacob said the package was brown in colour she recalled that midazolam came in orange boxes.

She added that she sometimes had to unlock drug cupboards to get mobile phones or watches that had been left behind.

The court heard from consultant neurosurgeon Richard Kerr, who said Bellhouse was an ‘honest, trustworthy, very dependable person.’

On Monday the court heard that orders of midazolam at the gynaecology department dropped dramatically when Bellhouse was off work.

Jurors were read a transcript of a police interview with the defendant, where she was told by the interviewing officer that the two theatres in the gynaecology department ordered between 20 and 30 vials of the drug each week on average between October 2014 and June 2015.

In a two-week period in late November and early December 2014 no orders were made, which police said coincided with Bellhouse being off work.

She told the interviewing officer: “I do not do much ordering.

“The order is not something I am particularly included in.”

Bellhouse denies theft of the drug from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust between May 1, 2014, and July 8, 2015. The trial continues.